Wednesday, May 27, 2009

You can now add another thing to the list of things John Crapilari took from the University of Memphis. In addition to recruits, coaches, and dreams, turns out Crapilari took our integrity as a university athletic department and may go on to take our NCAA Record 38 win season, our Final Four banner, Dozier, Anderson, and McGrady's claim to be the winningest college basketball players in NCAA history, a CUSA regular season and tournament championship, and, how fitting, wreck Memphis' chance at breaking the record for most consecutive conference wins... currently held by the University of the commonwealth of Kentucky.

According to the Commercial Appeal, the NCAA has accused the University of serious violations during the 2007-2008 season, during which Crapilari was the coach. The five page letter to Dr. Raines and the accompanying 13 page report state that the violations deal with cheating on the SAT by ONE player, and that ONE player only played ONE year. There could be only ONE...

ONE...

ONE...ONE...

The report also alleges the University gave $2,260 in free travel to an "associate" of this ONE player. WWW.anyONE?

While serious, these charges only reflect a lack of University oversight and not a lack of control, therefore, and especially since Pastner was not employed by the University at such time, the penalties should only be confined to the 2007-2008 season... mainly forfeiture of games, trophies, streaks, and banners. But the ramifications could reach farther than the 2007-2008 season, especially since Memphis is in the running for recruiting the services of Noel Johnson, who retracted his letter of intent from USC amid a recruiting scandal involving OJ Mayo. Only time will tell. This is disappointing, but with all the politics and doublespeak, it was only a matter of time before something like this surfaced. The University was made aware of the charges on January 16th, 2009... might that have factored in to Crapilari's decision to leave Memphis? We will never know. The CA quotes RC Johnson as saying he is "still working" on his response to the NCAA. C'mon RC, its been over 4 months, put down the crayons and send them your phamphlet already... I'm sure it looks fine.

This is just terrible! Now, all those records and winning streaks are gone and we are nothing. Great! Now, we only have ONE true Final Four that was 36 years ago! I hope Calipari and Kentucky are affected. And that Pastner can break those records we once had or were about to have. AH!

Well it will be hard to punish any one person for this so the NCAA will throw down a blanket punishment on the University even though the two parties responsible, Coach X and Rose, are no longer here. Coach X had to be in the know about this and its not too hard to believe with his "do whatever it takes" mentality toward recruiting and questionable ethics. Rose had to have known about it because it was his test. But just as in the OJ Mayo case, nothing will be done to Rose, and more than likely Coacj X escapes free too.